Owen was an accomplished lecturer; but one's attention to him
depended on two things - a primary interest in the subject,
and some elementary acquaintance with it. If, for example,
his subject were the comparative anatomy of the cycloid and
ganoid fishes, the difference in their scales was scarcely of
vital importance to one's general culture. But if he were
lecturing on fish, he would stick to fish; it would be
essentially a JOUR MAIGRE.
With Huxley, the suggestion was worth more than the thing
said. One thought of it afterwards, and wondered whether his
words implied all they seemed to imply. One knew that the
scientist was also a philosopher; and one longed to get at
him, at the man himself, and listen to the lessons which his
work had taught him. At one of these lectures I had the
honour of being introduced to him by a great friend of mine,
John Marshall, then President of the College of Surgeons. In
later years I used to meet him constantly at the Athenaeum.
Looking back to the days of one's plasticity, two men are
pre-eminent among my Dii Majores. To John Stuart Mill and to
Thomas Huxley I owe more, educationally, than to any other
teachers. Mill's logic was simply a revelation to me. For
what Kant calls 'discipline,' I still know no book, unless it
be the 'Critique' itself, equal to it.
